Judges remove districts, drop other claims in NC redistricting suits Carolina Journal
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ANALYSIS
University of Michigan departments and colleges continue to embrace “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” almost a year after officials promised to abandon a massive “strategic plan.”
In March 2025, former University of Michigan President Santa Ono announced that the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the Office for Health Equity and Inclusion would close. The school also promised to discontinue its “DEI 2.0 Strategic Plan” and eliminate or reassign much of its affiliated staff. Ono’s embrace of DEI played a central role in his failed attempt to become the new president of the University of Florida.
PARIS — Paris prosecutors opened on Wednesday two new investigations into potential sex abuse crimes and financial wrongdoings linked to Jeffrey Epstein following the release of millions of files of the millionaire financier and convicted sex offender, and called on possible victims to come forward.
Paris prosecutor Laurence Beccuau said the investigations are seeking to use the files released by the U.S. administration, media reports and new complaints that are being filed.
“All that data … some will shed light on others to be able to get a well-informed, very broad, panoramic view,” Beccuau said on France Info news broadcaster.
Germany’s Merz says he can’t stand applause for Rubio at Munich conference South China Morning Post
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Man with shotgun running towards US Capitol building arrested by police Al Jazeera
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration said Tuesday that Japan will finance the production of synthetic diamonds and two energy projects worth about $36 billion as the initial tranche of investments under a deal reached last year following months of tariff negotiations.
Trump’s announcement that the three projects had been selected, as part of a $550 billion package that Japan committed to in exchange for his administration reducing tariffs on Japanese cars and other goods, was confirmed hours later by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
“These projects are so large, and could not be done without one very special word, TARIFFS,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “America is building again. America is producing again. And America is WINNING again.”
Woke Portland Public Schools (PPS) are in trouble for blatantly racist programs. I know you’re shocked.
The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has opened an investigation into PPS over its Center for Black Student Excellence (CBSE). ED believes this CBSE could be illegal under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to a Feb. 17 press release. PPS has allocated millions of dollars specifically for black students, discriminating on the basis of skin color.
Japanese exports climbed 16.8% year on year in January, sharply beating market expectations and growing at their fastest rate since November 2022 as shipments to Asia and Western Europe surged, government data on Wednesday showed.
Growth was higher than December’s 5.1%, and beat Reuters-polled economists’ estimates of 12%.
Value of exports to China, Japan’s largest trading partner, jumped 32%, after rising 5.6% in December at a time when the two countries are locked in a diplomatic standoff over Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments over Taiwan.
German public broadcaster ZDF has issued an on-air apology after its flagship news program, Heute Journal, aired a segment containing AI-generated footage depicting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arresting a migrant family.
The controversy followed the Feb. 15 broadcast, which ZDF said examined fears in parts of the United States over immigration enforcement operations. Viewers quickly noted on social media that portions of the footage were artificially generated, with an OpenAI Sora watermark visible on screen.
Chinese Officials Purged for ‘Improper Discussion’ as Xi Tightens Political Discipline Vision Times
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If you wanted a textbook example of the Streisand Effect, look no further than the Trump administration’s meddling in the Texas Senate race.
CBS News refused to air late night host Stephen Colbert’s interview with Democratic Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who is currently locked in a competitive Senate primary with Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
Colbert said that CBS’ lawyers feared retribution from the Federal Communications Commission, claiming that the interview could be seen as a violation of the equal-time rule.
No AI data centers, no AI revolution.
Or to be less dramatic, slowing the buildout of these sprawling server farms will slow technical advances and the economywide spread of generative artificial intelligence, which is shaping up to be a powerful new general-purpose technology. As such, a new survey from Politico suggests Silicon Valley shouldn’t take voter tolerance for granted.
Let’s start with the good news for AI companies: Just 28 percent of 2,000 surveyed would oppose the building of a new data center in their area. That, versus 37 percent who would support construction and 28 percent who would neither support nor oppose.
Fulton County, Ga., officials say DOJ lied about elections office raid upi.com
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Canada can’t be ‘naive’ to China’s transnational repression threat: report – National– globalnews.ca
Researchers behind a new report on transnational repression are warning Canada must not be “naïve” as it seeks better relations with China, which remains a top perpetrator in intimidating and harassing dissidents abroad.
The report by the Montreal Institute for Global Security (MIGS) called transnational repression “one of the most serious yet least understood threats to security and democracy in Canada,” and said China remains a leader in such efforts.
It cited several examples, including so-called “police stations” and online influence campaigns targeting Chinese Canadian diaspora communities. Families still living in China have been threatened, the report adds, and women have been targeted with sexual AI deepfakes.
It is “disheartening” that some cutting-edge tech companies seem reluctant to fully do business with the military and support all of its operations, a key Defense Department official said Tuesday amid an escalating feud between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley firm Anthropic over the reported use of the company’s AI tool in recent U.S. Special Forces missions in Venezuela.
from www.washingtontimes.com
Juliette Bryant says she first met Jeffrey Epstein when she was a 20-year-old psychology and philosophy student in Cape Town, South Africa, who modeled part time.
Her first interaction with the late American sex offender came by chance, when she was approached on a night out by a girl who offered to introduce her to a man who she said was described to her as American royalty.
“She said she knew a man who was here who was the ‘King Of America,’ and he was here with Bill Clinton and Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker. She told me that his best friend Leslie Wexner owns Victoria’s Secret and it would be a very good idea for me to meet them because it could possibly help with my modeling career,” Bryant told CBS News on Sunday. “So we went along to the restaurant where they were having dinner down the road. And sure enough, there they were. Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, Jeffrey Epstein, and a few government officials from South Africa.”
Supreme Court to use software to identify justices’ conflict of interests The Washington Post
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In 1987, economist and Nobel laureate Robert Solow made a stark observation about the stalling evolution of the information age: Following the advent of transistors, microprocessors, integrated circuits, and memory chips of the 1960s, economists and companies expected these new technologies to disrupt workplaces and result in a surge of productivity. Instead, productivity growth slowed, dropping from 2.9% from 1948 to 1973, to 1.1% after 1973.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert during Thursday’s September 18, 2025 show. Scott Kowalchyk/CBS/Getty
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Executives at CBS News made it clear to Late Show host Stephen Colbert: he wasn’t to interview Texas state Rep. James Talarico last night, nor was he to discuss how he wasn’t supposed to talk to the Democratic US Senate hopeful. But Colbert, who only has months left of his tenure on the show after being ousted by Paramount Global, didn’t listen.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
The University of Harvard is offering an “Immigrant Justice Lab” course this semester where Ivy League students can earn credit hours contributing “research and writing for asylum applicants.”
HIST 123 is available for undergraduate students in the history department of the school’s social sciences division and utilizes a partnership with the Mabel Center for Immigrant Justice, a nonprofit legal services organization that provides free representation to asylum seekers.
Students at Eagle Ridge Middle School in Minnesota participated in an anti-ICE protest during the school day, chanting slogans including “We hate ICE,” while remaining on school grounds under staff supervision. This school has a 27% math proficiency and a 38% reading proficiency. But they are being taught to be terrorists.
As my late grandfather was fond of pointing out, it’s a tough world, but sometimes you get a laugh out of it. Case in point: Democrats in and out of Congress were whining for more oversight of the actions of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), but now the partial government shutdown that Democrats voted for and caused has curtailed the very department that was carrying out that oversight – the Department of Homeland Security.
The Anglican Communion and the Church of England have faced significant challenges in modern times, with the church grappling with how to stay relevant while also preserving traditions for its more conservative members.
The debate surrounding gay marriage was an extremely divisive topic, with a 10-year debate resulting in the rejection of same-sex seremonies in 2023. Now, the Church of England has voted again against standalone ceremonies for homosexual couples at its general council.
The bishops concluded that theological and legal obstacles prevented the introduction of separate ceremonies, and so they were excluded from church practice, writes Hetek.hu.
DONALD Trump has slammed the UK Chagos Islands deal as “a big mistake”.
He called the 100-year lease agreed by PM Sir Keir Starmer “tenuous, at best” and claimed that the US could need Diego Garcia to hit back at Iran if a nuclear deal is not agreed.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson delivered her first State of the City address on Tuesday, but what was supposed to be a defining moment for the newly elected leader quickly drew criticism after a rocky start marked by technical glitches and visible confusion.
Wilson, who has been in office for roughly six weeks, opened her remarks by greeting the audience and acknowledging the length of the speech ahead.
“Good morning. How are you all doing today? OK. Are you ready for this? I don’t think I’ve ever talked for as long as I’m about to talk, so we’ll see how it goes,” she said.
Bangkok offers to facilitate Myanmar ethnic talks without interference Thai PBS World
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In the wake of 9/11, the newly established Office of the Director of National Intelligence produced the nation’s first National Intelligence Strategy, a document explicitly intended to guide reforms to the intelligence community and help prevent another terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland. The challenges U.S. intelligence faces today are no less dramatic. While crises in Ukraine, Iran, and Venezuela have each been driven by their own internal logics, together they reflect profound shifts in the balance and nature of power as a new international order begins to take shape. These shifts — a more contested strategic environment; accelerating technology competition; and eroding faith in international rules, norms, and institutions — have significantly increased uncertainty in world politics and elevated the risk and potential costs of strategic surprise.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is calling on Casey Wasserman to resign from his leadership role with the LA28 Organizing Committee following backlash over past emails tied to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Bass said this week that while she does not have the authority to remove Wasserman from his post, she believes he should step aside for the good of the city and the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“Ultimately, any decision on the LA28 leadership must be made by the LA28 Board,” Bass said to CNN. “As you know, they are a separate and independent nonprofit organization.”
WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of leaked emails from the personal account of John Podesta, former President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, in late 2016.
The decentralized army of sleuths that subsequently combed over the leaked emails found not only damning insights into Hillary Clinton and her doomed presidential campaign but odd messages about pizza, hot dogs, ice cream, and other foods.
‘842 occurrences of the word pizza, which seems like a lot.’